


Pollinating

by Jimiel



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Kinda, Mpreg, Other, Weird Hobbit Biology, because why the fuck not, frying pan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1957275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jimiel/pseuds/Jimiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo reveals something in Lake Town that throws the Company off... Too bad only Bifur cottons on to the truth until its smacked into them!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pollinating

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea for this around New Year's, started writing it on January 2nd, 2014. Figured I'd finally finish it and get it posted. :D

It was sometime during their stay in Thranduil’s dungeon that Bilbo felt the first signs. Or, more specifically, the elves felt the first sign. For Bilbo had blacked out and rampaged one whole pantry of the elf king’s kitchen, eating everything in the store only to wake up nestled in an out of the way corner and feeling more content than he’d felt in weeks. The elves never did discover what happened to the contents of that pantry.

The second sign was completely overlooked as a normal illness after Bilbo’s experience in the freezing water riding on a barrel. He did immensely enjoy the others coddling him for the few days he was on bed rest, at least.

It wasn’t until after his illness, as he was finally taking a wash in the bathing room of their house in Lake Town, that Bilbo saw the third and most definite sign. And for the life of him his brain didn’t seem to want to register the truth as he stared at the all too obvious marking that indicated what was going on and tiles started to fall into place in his mind. Once the last tile slid into place, his mind raced to try to determine the exact culprit. Which swiftly lead to a very interesting conversation.

“I blame each and every one of you!” Bilbo accused loudly, standing in the door to the main room wearing naught but a hastily wrapped towel and dripping water everywhere.

Thirteen heads turned toward the Hobbit and a moment of stunned silence met Bilbo’s announcement before eyes were averted… Most eyes, anyway.

Dori tried to cover Ori’s eyes while hissing, “Master Baggins, where are your clothes?”

Nori wolf whistled.

Bofur waggled his brows. “Well if I’m gonna be blamed you may as well tell me what I did so I can do it again, laddie…”

Bombur blushed at the accusation and immediately started looking for something to nibble on, his usual tactic to avoid speaking.

Fíli and Kíli both started snickering, thinking someone had pulled a prank and Bilbo was searching for the culprit.

Thorin rolled his eyes after a brief glance and went back to perusing the needed supplies list with Balin, who merely shook his head, and Glóin, who cursed at having lost count of the coins in his hand.

Dwalin snorted and went back to crimping a piece of metal to make a new, temporary, knuckle-duster.

Oin had only looked because everyone else had. Since his ear trumpet still needed to be replaced, he merely went back to sorting his supply of herbs while the conversation continued without him.

Bifur stared at Bilbo as if he could determine what the problem was by merely looking at what could be seen. Since he would have freely admitted to having taken a good, long look at one of the many bathing stops along the journey, he did notice something that wasn’t there before and made a gruff sound, gesturing toward Bilbo’s middle.

Bilbo caught the gesture and nodded vigorously. “Yes, Bifur. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” He stomped a foot in a show of almost maidenly pique. “I don’t know which of you is responsible for this…” Bilbo gestured to his stomach, which was almost as large as when their quest started since Hobbits tended toward large middles. So most were confused over how it could be their fault. “But when I find out I’m going to take Sting to someone’s hide!”

“Here now, Baggins.” Nori spoke up. “I know some of us wouldn’t change a bit if you took Sting to them, but I’m far too pretty for such a threat…Ow!”

Dori shook his hand gently from the sting of the smack he’d given his brother whom he promptly ignored. “Now Bilbo, what is all this fuss about?”

But Bilbo wasn’t listening anymore; he was pacing and thinking aloud. “When could it have happened? It isn’t large enough for Rivendell, too small for Thranduil’s palace… Think, Bilbo, think… Oh. Beorn’s!” Bilbo absently rubbed his large stomach as he paced. “Yes, that would time it nicely. It was cold in the mountains, then warm at Beorn’s… False spring. It has to be…”

Bifur had searched out a piece of wood after speaking up to Bilbo earlier and was whittling away. Already the shape of some small animal was starting to be seen in his work.

The others just looked at each other, confused.

Bofur tried his hardest to piece together what Bilbo meant before he looked closely at where the hobbit had indicated the problem was. Wrapped around Bilbo’s navel was a tattoo of a flower. A tattoo that Bilbo had not had when they had bathed at Beorn’s, which Bilbo’s rambling told them had been a location involved in the situation. “Oi, when did you go and get a tattoo, Bilbo?”

Bofur’s words caused Bilbo to freeze from his pacing and turn to the miner even as everyone else paying attention searched out and regarded the flowery tattoo. Bilbo’s eye twitched.

“Did Beorn give it to you?” Fíli curiously asked.

Bifur shook his head mournfully and ever so slowly eased away from the prince, still working on his carving.

The sudden, surprisingly deep, loud scream of frustration from Bilbo startled everyone except Bifur and caused a couple of the dwarfs to fall onto the floor. They looked up just in time to see the bathroom door slam closed!

\- - -

Over the next few days Bilbo swapped between enraged for no reason and starving. This behavior continued as the left Lake Town and headed toward Erebor. The only time he didn’t seem to be grumpy was every time Bifur presented him with yet another tiny animal toy to add to Bilbo’s growing collection. Every time this happened Bilbo would throw himself into Bifur’s arms and weep while the grizzled dwarf happily patted the hobbit’s back until Bilbo regained control.

Since Bifur seemed to have a clue about what was going on, the others approached him at various times only to be rebuffed in their efforts to question him. Most inquiries were met with a roll of his eyes or a shake of his head. When the older company members tried to get the information from him he would actually smack them upside the head!

Thorin ended up getting smacked more than once, but that was most likely because Bilbo had giggled sweetly when he had seen Bifur do such a thing…

This infuriated Thorin, but he knew better than to retaliate against the dwarf with the axe in his head. Anything he did might cause Bifur to slip into one of his phases and become violent, effectively neutering the king’s anger at the insolence.

With Bilbo’s mood swinging all over the place the way it was, no one was inclined to actually send him in to the treasury when they finally had the door open, Bifur least of all. Bilbo was having none of it though and marched in anyway. An indeterminate amount of time later and there was a horrendous screech from within the mountain followed by the sounds of a full out battle.

The dwarfs raced into the mountain, charging into the treasure room, and froze…

Standing atop the prone body of Smaug the Terrible stood none other than Bilbo. Smaug’s body was laying on it’s back and Bilbo was perched atop the beast’s unmoving chest and leaning against a bejeweled mithril spear that was buried in a weak spot of the dragon.

“How…”

“Did you know that the people in this mountain were completely ostentatious in their wealth?” Bilbo demanded. When no one answered, he gave a sharp nod before pulling his spear out of the dragon’s chest and used the scales as steps to climb down from the monstrous beast. “He started getting fussy and misbehaving… It quite reminded me of when the dogs the Maggot family raises were acting up. So I thought, ‘What do the Maggots do when their dogs misbehave?’ and was reminded of the time I saw Anne Maggot take a stack of papers and bop one of the young dogs on the nose.”

The dwarfs were standing there, slack jawed, and staring at the hobbit.

Bilbo gave an agreeable nod. “Of course his skin’s a lot tougher than a dog’s so I looked around and found this.” Bilbo pulled out a large frying pan that was made out of mithril, though the hobbit most likely didn’t know that. “I couldn’t think of why an ordinary pan would be in a treasure room, so obviously it wasn’t ordinary. I grabbed it up and just as Smaug was going to bite me I swung it! Hit him right on the tip of his nose. It must have been a sensitive spot because he screamed up such a fuss and so I whacked him again and again until he was squirming on his back. Then I grabbed the first long and pointy thing I could find, scrambled up his scales, and stabbed him in the spot where I saw one of his scales was missing.”

Twelve dwarf bodies hit the ground in a faint as the remaining one, Bifur, moved over to pull the tired hobbit into an embrace. He grunted something unintelligible.

“I know, I’m sorry.” Bilbo whined tiredly, his hand locked around the shaft of the bloody spear. “But it gives us great strength…”

\- - -

“You miserable hobbi- AAHHH!” Thorin was suddenly cradling the hand he had reached out with, intending to throttle Bilbo.

Bilbo stood, feet braced and clutched in his hands was the mithril frying pan he had used on Smaug. “No! You’re miserable! I am pregnant! And I am not dealing with your stubborn ass any more! You work out a deal with the men and elves and you stop that stupid orc army from getting near here and you bring me something to eat! I have had it with you dwarves! Get yourselves in line or I’ll take the pan to your noses as I did with Smaug!”

Bifur glared at the others as he gently herded Bilbo inside the mountain, murmuring to the hobbit.

“Yes, you’ve been marvelous, I don’t blame you...”

\- - -

“How are you pregnant?” Kíli asked from his bed in the healing tent.

All of the dwarves had been dying to know, but it wasn’t until after the orc army had been brutalized and driven off that they’d been able to ask. Kíli had just thought of it first when he saw Bilbo fussing over Nori and Dori in between rubbing at his ever-growing stomach.

Bilbo paused. “You know, I don’t think I’d even realized none of you would know… Hobbits are different.” Bilbo washed his hands carefully before picking up a clear glass of water. He moved over to sit on the edge of Kíli’s bed since his was off to the side and everyone could see him from there. “We have physical genders, but inside we’re all the same. We’re like plants, in a way. We can become pregnant from skin contact similar to the way flowers are pollinated.”

“What!” More than one dwarf flailed at this information.

“So any time someone touches you, you could end up pregnant?” Dwalin yelled.

Bilbo rolled his eyes. “No, it isn’t quite that easy. It’s only for a month or so in spring. If we don’t want children, we just take care to keep covered or isolated during that time.”

Nori’s eyes were wide. “That’s what you meant by false spring… Back in Lake Town.”

“Just so.” Bilbo agreed. “Fauntling season had already ended before you lot arrived in Bag End. But the cold of the Misty Mountains followed by the warmth of Beorn’s tricked my body into thinking it was time for another season. So anyone who touched me around the time we left Beorn’s and for a week or two after…”

“Touched… How does that work?” Kíli wanted to know.

Bilbo considered only a moment before pressing his fingers against the side of the glass in his hands. “You saw me wash my hands, right? Now look.” He turned to hold the glass so Kíli could see. “See how there are still marks from even clean hands on the glass?” At Kíli’s nod, he continued. “Every time you touch someone or something you leave a tiny little trace of yourself. Hobbit skin during spring absorbs it and, if there’s enough, it works to create a fauntling.” He lifted up his tunic to show his swelling stomach and how the flower tattoo had grown larger with more petals since he had shown them in Lake Town. “We blossom.”

The dwarfs fell into a loud discussion, mostly Glóin praying to Mahal that his wife wouldn’t kill him for perhaps unintentionally impregnating a hobbit.

Ori moved to sit next to Bilbo at Kíli’s side. “May I?” He asked timidly and, at Bilbo’s nod, he reached out to brush his fingers along the edge of the flower mark. “When will you have it?”

“Oh, the flower will tell me as it gets closer. It will continue to grow until the edges are stretched tight in a large circle around the protrusion. Then things will get even more different from how other races do things.” Bilbo didn’t notice the others falling silent to listen. “The circle will actually tighten, and I’ll have to start wearing a sling to support my stomach, because at that point it’s turning into a pod. Eventually it will separate from my body entirely and I’ll have a new button at the break off point.” He tapped his naval. “Not long after that the pod hardens up and breaks open and there you have the little fauntlings ready to start their lives.”

Ori’s fingers had frozen sometime during the telling. “Lives?”

Bilbo nodded blithely. “Oh yes. If more than one other parent is involved the Hobbit always has multiple children in their pod. The flower will change as it grows, telling me how many are in there and what their genders will be.”

Off on the other side of the tent, someone whimpered.

“I think I need more of the good painkillers to process this…”

\- - -

Years later…

Delilah Baggins was the largest of the fauntlings Bilbo had produced. She was visibly more muscular than her siblings with a build rather like Dwalin’s and his nose as well. She had Dori’s sparkling silver hair and Bofur’s smile. She was often leading her troop of siblings in mock war on the young full dwarfs in the mountain… When she wasn’t busy glaring down a matching pair of silvery-blue eyes belonging to Thorin into having a tea party with her, anyway.

Belladonna Baggins tended to spend far too much time in the company of a certain thief, but no one could really object because she had the same narrow face and features he did. Her hair was the brighter red of Bombur though and she had Kíli’s puppy eyes, which Nori taught her to use like deadly weapons.

Bryndís Baggins had Fíli’s golden hair, though it curled like Bilbo’s. She had a nose that could have been either Óin or Glóin’s and definitely had the lungs of them as she gave war cries that would make any dwarf parent proud.

Farin Baggins was the only one without pointy hobbit ears. His were rounded and only made him look more like Balin in the face than anyone, though his nose was Ori’s in miniature. He had Bifur’s wild black hair though and definitely preferred his vegetables to all the meats the others liked. He was by far the most gentle and smartest of the quartet.

At the moment, all four of the ten-year old dwobbit children were teamed up with Gimli and some of their younger fathers, waging war against most of their other fathers in a horribly messy food fight.

\- - -

Off in another part of the mountain, Bilbo was standing in front of one of his dwarves, eyes closed, foreheads pressed together, and fingers grasping tightly to the dwarf’s tunic. He drew in a deep, shaky breath as the dwarf slowly, teasingly, let his hands roam over Bilbo’s bare arms and back…

**Author's Note:**

> Fic Facts:
> 
> Fathers of Delilah - Thorin, Bofur, Dwalin, Dori  
> Fathers of Belladonna - Kíli, Nori, Bombur  
> Fathers of Bryndís Baggins - Fíli, Óin, Glóin  
> Fathers of Farin - Balin, Ori, Bifur
> 
> Name Reasonings:
> 
> Delilah and Belladonna are named in the Shire fashion after flowers. Belladonna is also named after Bilbo's mother.  
> Bryndís is named in the dwarf fashion and to honor Dís. Bryndís is Scandinavian, the general area where most of the dwarf names in canon originate from, and means 'strong armor.' I liked it...  
> Farin is the name of Dwalin, Balin, Óin, and Glóin's grandfather.


End file.
